Ant Financial has been expanding internationally, but this is its most significant move to date.

Ant Financial has stuck up several global partnerships with the goal of giving its Chinese users access to services when traveling. In the last year alone, partnerships have been stuck in Europe, Australia, and North America in order to expand the the acceptance of Alipay, the company's mobile wallet. These deals have specifically targeted the large number of Chinese citizens traveling every year — 120 million Chinese citizens traveled abroad in 2015 and on average they spent $875 each, according to Bloomberg

However, the purchase of MoneyGram will allow Ant Financial to significantly expand its global reach with international users. MoneyGram has roughly 350,000 partners in over 200 countries, where it has a local sales force and operations. Leveraging this network will give Ant Financial massive reach to push its financial service offerings by integrating its mobile platforms and services with MoneyGram's network. This will help the company reach its goal of having 2 billion financial service users in the next 10 years, according to CNBC.

This move could become even more profitable as Ant Financial leverages its digital network to build MoneyGram's digital presence.

At a time when digital remittance is increasing in popularity, MoneyGram has seen slowing growth in this segment. In Q3 2016, MoneyGram only saw digital revenue grow by 12% year-over-year (YoY), which represented 13% of all money transfer revenue. This shows growth has continued to slow, as digital revenue grew by 17% in the previous quarter and by 71% in Q3 2015 a year ago. For some context, major rival Western Union saw consumer-to-consumer (C2C) revenue from Westernunion.com grow by 28% on a constant-currency basis in Q3 2016, with transactions growing 29%.

However, this deal will bring MoneyGram new access to a massive digital network, which is likely to include Alipay. The mobile wallet already counts 450 million Chinese citizens as users. If Ant Financial were to incorporate MoneyGram's remittance capabilities with Alipay, MoneyGram could immediately see massive growth in its digital segment. And if the company's target of having 60% of its transaction volume coming from outside China is to come to fruition it's likely international citizens will get access to Alipay, which in turn would make MoneyGram even more profitable.

Massive mergers such as this are sure to have a drastic effect on the payments ecosystem, which has grown exponentially in the last few years to include vendors, acquirers, merchants, processors, and more.

John Heggestuen, director of research at BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on the payments ecosystem that drills into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices.

Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play.

Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.

In full, the report:

Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond.

Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers.

Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step.

Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem.

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